Rowan Williams on self-judgment Bonhoeffer writes [in a poem on his imprisonment], “They often tell me / I would step from my cell’s confinement / calmly, cheerfully, firmly, / like a squire from his country-house.” … But the poem is about the great gulf between what “they” see – a confident, adult, rational, prayerful, faithful, […]
Michael J. Buckley on Weakness For there is a different question, one proper to any form of Christian ministry: Is this person weak enough to be a servant of the gospel of Christ? [81] What is meant by weakness? Not the experience of sin. Indeed, almost its opposite. Weakness is the experience of a peculiar […]
On the Role of Justification in Lutheran Theology Today’s post is prompted by the following remark from the contemporary American Lutheran moral theologian Gilbert Meilaender. However much some contemporary Lutherans have attempted to think of Lutheranism as a freestanding theological system, it can really be understood only as a correction within the Catholic tradition. It degenerates […]
(Primarily aimed at ministers. Some hard words, but I needed to hear them. Keller starts at 1:03.)
Alva Noë thinks the arts can actually teach us about ourselves, our lot in life, and our experience of the world around us. While this might seem like an unremarkable claim, among philosophers of art, this is no trivial thesis. As one kind of aesthetic cognitivist, Noë is thereby denying that the arts are primarily about, say, expressions of private taste or articulations of emotion.
The reason I’m drawing attention to this conversation at all is because I wouldn’t want to see others neglect aesthetics as I did in my undergrad philosophy days. This branch of philosophy stands to make an appreciable contribution to one’s general philosophical sensibilities if students would attend to its concerns and discursive practices — particularly if one’s previous exposure to philosophy has exaggerated its proximity to the sciences.
If you’d care to follow up, Noë further elaborates his take on art in an article here.
And for those specially intrigued, Noë also airs his thoughts in book-length form here.
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